


Remember When

by trashmovthtoziers



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: BAMF Number Five, Good Brother Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy), Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Let Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy) Say Fuck, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Number Five | The Boy Needs A Hug, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, Sibling Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-29
Updated: 2019-04-29
Packaged: 2019-12-27 01:15:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18293867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trashmovthtoziers/pseuds/trashmovthtoziers
Summary: Five teleports into the mausoleum during one of Klaus’ individual training sessions





	Remember When

**Author's Note:**

> the summary is actual shit, but it's to-the-point and perfectly accurate. this took me way longer than it should've to write, but it was fun anyway. this idea/headcannon has been turning through my brain since I first watched the show, so I'm glad to finally put it on paper (well... a google doc).
> 
> i hope you find it to your liking, you sweet angels :)
> 
> title from wallows (the sole reason being because that song slaps)

Talking was forbidden at the dinner table. No exceptions.  
  
It was an extremely strict rule of which Father had enforced since the very beginning. If anyone so much as asked for the bread to be passed down please, there would be hell for them to pay after everyone’s plates were clean and the others had been sent to their rooms. Dinner-time, as far as Father was concerned, was a place of reflection on what had happened the previous day. It wasn’t of complete silence, per se, as there was usually something spinning on Father’s record-player, whether that be another one of his instructional survival tapes by Herr Whatever-His-Name-Was or one of his many classical records.  
  
Talking was forbidden, though, and there were no exceptions.  
  
Klaus’ unexpected absence from the dinner table was what brought out the first spoken words in quite some time, surely the very first ones of the meal. Everyone noticed it, but no one would say it. Until Five did.  
  
Luther was too blind by Father’s praise, unable to see it for what it really was: fake. He never spoke during dinner nor had he ever planned to do such a forbidden thing, not even if his lap was on fire. Allison, Ben, and Vanya were all too scared of upsetting Father and facing his punishment, so they kept their mouths sealed shut and swallowed down any words that came bubbling to the surface. If Five hadn’t taken one for the team, then perhaps Diego, the resident hot-head, would’ve, but that was unlikely. His stutter ruined everything. He was too scared that Father would call him out for it again (“Speak properly, boy!), looking disappointed.  
  
So Five took initiative.  
  
He set down his fork beside his plate and turned in his seat to face Father, who was sat at the head of the table, reveling in the melancholic notes of the pianic record that he had chosen for tonight. The sound of Five sucking in his breath, preparing to speak, however, was as loud as an overhead fighter jet. “Where’s Klaus?” he asked, simple and to-the-point.  
  
All eyes fell on him. All breathing ceased.  
  
Father turned toward Five in such a way that the lens of his monocle glinted almost dangerously in the filtered chandelier-light. Five held his ground, though, digging in his heels, unwavering and persistent under the Old Man’s glare. Father took a breath, then rasped, “Number Four is undergoing additional individual training. He’ll be back presently, I’m sure.”  
  
“‘Individual training’?” Five echoed because, well… because he could. He had already spoken so hell, he thought, why not do it some more? “Like what? What does that mean for him?”  
  
“It means, Number Five, that he is off perfecting his powers by himself,” Father said through clenched teeth. “And I’ll have no more of your foolish questions. Stay after dinner and we’ll have a little talk about disrupting things and meddling in other people’s affairs.”    
  
Five wanted nothing more than to argue, to attest, but from the warning looks that everyone was giving him, he could only assume that he would be better off not saying anything at all. He sighed, defeated, and turned back to his plate of chicken and stringed beans. Pushing his food around with his fork, he let his mind wander.  
  
Klaus had been taken out for ‘individual training’ several times before, Five could distantly recall, but had never explicitly talked to anyone about it. They were around only five-years-old the first time Klaus had been taken out, this being shortly after Father had discovered what his power really was. That time, Klaus hadn’t been gone for too long. In fact, it was probably only a few hours.    
  
It happened once more when Klaus was eight. Then, when he was nine. Five could faintly remember that he had been gone for quite some time then, maybe twelve hours. Klaus had come back changed, disturbed. Whatever he had done for those twelve hours had something to do with his powers (unsupervised all the while), and Five could only assume that that’s where he was now.  
  
If only he knew someplace like that, connected so heavily to Klaus’ power to communicate with the dead. Angrily, he speared his stringed beans and shoved them into his mouth.  
  
Wait a second… Dead people? A place?  
  
What was he, stupid?! It all made perfect sense— the cemetery. Father had left Klaus there, alone, to work on his powers. Five knew (hell, they _all_ knew) that Klaus had trouble controlling them. Sometimes, in the middle of a conversation, his eyes would catch on something off in the distance. He was easily distracted.  
  
There had been occasion— a memorable one— about a year back where a spirit had broken through to Klaus and had actually possessed him. That time, it had been harmless. The spirit of an old woman had spoken through him on one of their missions, saying something unintelligible in her smoker’s rasp about thieves and diamonds and pirates. After several moments, her line of connection was cut off and Klaus was back without any memory of what had happened.  
  
He had trouble controlling his powers, and it had the potential to be highly dangerous. Five wondered if Klaus had been possessed again, this time in the presence of Father. It could explain why he had been put in the cemetery, but he supposed that Klaus could've been put in there if it was what Father desired.  
  
Sighing, Five looked over and saw Diego carving curved lines into the table with his engraved knife. The others also seemed to have moved on too, either shoveling down their food or doing their own things away from Father’s watchful eyes. Five slumped further down into his seat, crossed his arms, and waited for this hell to be over.  
  
The others (sans for Five) had already cleaned their plates by the time that Father was half-finished with his. He seemed to be taking his sweet time with his dinner on purpose, perhaps to torture them, perhaps to teach Five a lesson about speaking out. They weren’t allowed to be excused until Father was finished and stood up. He would send them off to their rooms, waving his hand, for them to prepare for their measly nine o’clock bedtime of which no one actually followed.  
  
Eventually, after what felt like years, Father finished his dinner and rose from his seat. Like he always did, he waved his hand to signal them up to their rooms. Luther and Allison shot out of their seats, whispering with each other as they climbed the stairs. Diego ran ahead of them, shoving his knife back into the pocket of his schoolboy shorts. Ben followed behind Diego, taking the stairs two at a time. Before Vanya left with the others, she and Five shared a look. Be careful, it said. Good luck.  
  
Five nodded with a thin-lipped smile for his sister. He stayed put, lent back in his seat.  
  
With a final plunk of the piano keys, Father’s record was over. The needle slid back and forth, making short tapping sounds as it ran off the record. Father ignored it. It was all Five could hear. He kept his eyes trained on his plate.  
  
Father approached him, moving slowly and deliberately. He stopped just behind Five’s chair, his hands folded behind his back. His mustache twitched. “Stand up, Number Five. You’re acting as if you’ve never been taught manners in your life. It’s unacceptable.”  
  
Obediently, Five did as he was told, rising for his seat to stand before the Old Man. He kept his eyes fixed on his polished black shoes, knowing that if he met his father’s eyes, he would surely say something to piss him off. He had a plan regarding Klaus’ disappearing act, but it wouldn’t work if Father was mad at him. Five would pull a few strings that he hoped would appeal Father. “I’m so sorry. I sh—“  
  
“Ah-ah-ah!” Father silenced him with a raised index finger. This wasn’t going according to plan. “Don’t speak unless I tell you to. Your temperament controls you, and I understand that it can be used to your advantage during missions, but it should be harnessed underneath this roof. And because of that…” Before Five could even process what the hell was happening, Father had pulled a pair of industrial handcuffs out of his blazer pocket. He yanked Five’s wrists behind his back, pulled his shoulders terse, and secured the cuffs. “You won’t be doing any spatial jumping for quite a while.”  
  
Five floundered for only a moment, speechless. Anger bubbled in the pit of his stomach like a cauldron of stew, precariously spilling over the edges. He saw a flash of red, then only Father. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! LET ME OUT!” he screamed, trying to pull apart his handcuffs to, of course, no avail. His wrists burned like fire. In hope that it would somehow work this one time, Five tried to Jump with the handcuffs on. It didn’t work.  
  
“I unfortunately can’t do that,” Father said, his monocle chain idly swinging back and forth.  
  
“BUT—“  
  
Father reeled back his hand, readied himself, and slapped Five hard across the face, open-handed and trilling with power. Five let out a gasp of pain as the hand cracked across his face. The sheer force of the blow itself left him staggering backward, eyes swimming. His cheek burned like a hundred bee stings, already flooding with color.  
  
Reginald disregarded it, grabbed Five by the crook of his elbow, all but dragged him toward the stairs. Five really had no say in what was happening, and no matter how much he struggled to be released, tripping over his feet, he wouldn’t get what he wanted. Without his powers, he was weak compared to Father— a scrawny little kid with the build of a stick.  
  
“LET ME OUT OF THESE! LET ME OUT!” he screamed repeatedly, hoping and praying that it would get through to Father’s pea-sized Grinch-heart. When it never did, Five couldn’t say that he was surprised. Still, however, he had hope that someone would hear him and have enough balls to actually do something about it. “HELP ME! LET ME OUT OF THESE!”  
  
Father did no such thing. He simply kept moving along, deaf to everything. Five had tripped and fallen several times only to be yanked back up to his feet so harshly that he could feel his shoulder muscles overextending. He held out hope still that if he kept screaming, someone would react.  
  
No one did.  
  
As he was being pulled down the long hallway of bedrooms, he screamed louder than ever before. “SOMEONE HELP ME, GODDAMMIT! PLEASE GET ME OUT OF THESE!” Just before Five was shoved into his bedroom, he could’ve sworn that he saw Ben stick his head out of his room down the hall, but it easily could’ve been his imagination. As Father pushed him, he fell back onto his ass, sucking in a sharp breath through his teeth. He looked up wearily from where he was crumpled on the floor and saw Father standing in the doorway, looking to be almost a thousand feet tall.  
  
Five had never felt so meager.  
  
The Old Man slammed the door shut. The scraped of the lock clicked behind him.  
  
Sighing, Five fell fully back onto the floor, choosing to ignore how his wrists were digging into his spine. _So much for the plan to save Klaus_ , he thought grimly. It had probably been wishful thinking anyway. He couldn’t do anything with these handcuffs on. Spatial Jumping, which relied heavily on power from the hands, was impossible with handcuffs, even more so when they were secured behind your back. He was screwed unless he could find a way to unlock them.  
  
These handcuffs weren’t the cheap plastic ones that came with a Party City Halloween costume, these were the real deal. They were some kind of cold metal, industrially made.  
  
His stomachs muscles burned as he pushed himself into a sitting position with his legs. Feeling around his back blindly, he couldn’t tell what kind of lock the cuffs had on them. Then, suddenly, he was struck with an idea. It would only work if he could maneuver his hands to his front, and he wasn’t even sure if he would be able to do that, but it wouldn’t hurt him too much to try.  
  
He pushed himself wobbily to his feet. This kind of maneuver wouldn’t work for most people, but it could potentially work on Five, who was about as short and as skinny and as lanky as they came. He bent down so that he could step through the hole that his connected wrists made. It was tricky, tricky work, and if anyone were watching him do it, he would probably be beyond embarrassed, but after some weird back-roll thing, he finally managed to bring his hands around to the front.  
  
He sat on the ground for a moment afterward to catch his breath, preparing for the next step in his ill-considered plan of action: find something to unlock them.  
  
Before he could do that, his prayers were answered. “Five!” A frantic whisper came from the other side of his bedroom door, though he couldn’t tell who it was. “Are you there?”  
  
Hastily, he shuffled on his already floor-burnt knees across the room to sit beside the door. “What?” he whispered back, sure to keep his voice low.  
  
A bobby pin was slid underneath the hole at the bottom of the door, its rubber top already removed. He could hear two people whispering outside, fighting quietly. It took him a moment to realize who the voices belonged to: Diego and… Vanya? It explained the bobby pin, he supposed, but not really the fighting. Vanya had always been so irrationally well-tempered. Five was almost certain that he’d never heard her raise her voice once. After a moment, the bickering stopped and Diego’s voice came through, muffled by the door, “Buh-Bend one end of it into a little right angle and stick it into the lock.”  
  
“Thanks,” he whispered back, but they were already gone. Taking a deep breath, he picked up the bobby pin and shuffled over to his desk. Flipping on his lamp to ensure that he could see what he was doing and to cut down the risk of messing up with the one bobby pin Vanya and Diego had given him, he did as they had told him to do.  
  
He bent the end of one side into a small right angle with the hole of his cuffs. Precisely, he stuck it into the lock on his right handcuff. His other wrist was turned in such a way that the metal dug into his skin, but he ignored the pain. He was only focused on one at a time. He wiggled it around to no avail, realized that he was probably doing something wrong, and put it in a different way. The ratchet clicked and released, and his hand was finally free. He let out a shaky laugh as he moved to undo his left wrist. He pulled the other handcuff off, laughing freely now.  
  
Feeling liberated and fearless, he set the handcuffs down onto his desk, ensuring that they didn’t lock again. He would have to put them on once more before Father came back, but that was a problem his few-hours-in-the-future self. He rubbed idly at the red welts of which had formed on both of his wrists after having struggled so much with the cuffs. After a deep, trembling breath, he readied his hands and disappeared in a flash of fiery blue.  
  
He reappeared in the corner cemetery down the block. It was dusk, but the cloud-covered sky made it look more like midnight. A storm was coming, thunderclouds rolling in off in the distance. Tombstones surrounded him, rows upon rows upon rows of them, erected in the earth, engraved with names and dates, some of which had long since been forgotten. Even to Five, this place was fucking creepy. He suddenly wished that he’d remembered his flashlight, but supposed that he could do without it.  
  
“Klaus?” He called out blindly because, well… because he had no idea where to look. He wasn’t even sure that Klaus was here, was only functioning off of hope and a drive to disobey Father. Five wandered around the cemetery, calling out for his brother to preoccupy other looming thoughts about this creepy place. He’d been walking around aimlessly for quite a while before he found it.  
  
A stone mausoleum stood toward the back of the cemetery in front of the wrought-iron fence. It was square, bland, and eerie-looking, topped off with a wonky, lopsided cross.  
  
He approached it cautiously. It would make sense that Father would put Klaus in here seeing as it fit all the requirements. The thought of peering inside of it, however, prying open the door only to be met with who-knows-what, terrified Five. Would he find rotten corpses in there, escaped from their caskets? Would they stumble to their feet, suddenly undead? Before his thoughts could venture into a territory more morbid, he swallowed his pride and moved forward regardless.  
  
There was no doorknob on the front of the building, merely a steel handle, meaning that it would only open from the outside. Taking in another deep breath, he heaved open the heavy door and peered inside.  
  
After a moment for his eyes to adapt to the darkness, he found, much to his pleasure and surprise, his brother. Klaus cowered in the far left corner of the cool room with his face pressed into his knees. He didn’t even lift his head as Five stepped tentatively inside, making sure to leave the door cracked open behind him so that he could get out if he needed to.   
  
He was suddenly struck with the uncanny resemblance of this place and a morgue, lined with bodies set into the walls. It was almost unnaturally cold, winter cold, perhaps because it was windowless and partially underneath the ground. He was eye-level with the corpses, he realized with a displeased shiver. Once more, he did his best to suppress his thoughts.  
  
He took an uncertain step forward, and when Klaus didn’t react, he took another. “Hey, Klaus…” he whispered. No answer. Sighing, Five tried again, louder this time, “ _Klaus_.” Still, nothing.  
  
He approached his brother cautiously, unsure of what to do. He had made it this far without even considering this possibility. Klaus was unresponsive. In his head, Five had imagined saving Klaus a little bit differently. He would step into the mausoleum, Klaus would see him, looking relieved, and immediately begin praising him for saving his life. Five would smile benignly at him, hands on his hips with his chest puffed out, and say that it was really no big deal. It was wishful, unrealistic thinking.  
  
Shaking the thought out of his head, Five hunkered down in front of Klaus, crouched on his heels. After a short mental debate with himself, indecisive, he held out a shaky hand and set it hesitantly on Klaus’ shoulder.  
  
Klaus jumped, a small yelp escaping from his cracked lips. His head shot up from where it was not-so-protectively shielded from the spirits of the crypt, surely whiplash-inducing. His wide, searching eyes found Five in no time, foggily meeting his bewildered stare.  
  
“Five?” Klaus croaked, his voice strained from not underuse, but overuse. Father had locked him in here after lunch, and he had been stuck ever since. He spent the better half of his imprisonment screaming in order to partially drown out the crypt’s many spirits. He had eventually grown tired of screaming, though, and had just accepted his fate. He didn’t answer them as they asked him questions, told their stories of their deaths, he just cowered in the corner, wanting out. “Wha…?”  
  
There had been a moment of very quick thought process to where Klaus, seeing Five, had assumed the worst. Tears prickled in his eyes. Then, he registered the fact that because Five’s hand was on his shoulder and he could feel the pressure, he was real and most defiantly not dead. He had never touched a spirit before, only felt their cold presence. Five’s hand was human-warm and his eyes were very much alive.  
  
“You okay?” Five asked. To anyone else, it would sound brisk and callous, but to Klaus, it was music to his hears. Five was an unfeeling, self-absorbed little bastard (prick, if you will), so hearing this kind of concern from him was enough to make his eyes water slightly. He half-expected Five to retract like he always did when emotions were involved, but he did no such thing. “Klaus?” he prompted after a moment of no answer.  
  
Klaus nodded vigorously, huffing out a shaky exhale. “Yeah, sure, bud, I’m dandy. It’s not like I’ve been locked in here for the last seven hours without food, water, or even a place to use the bathroom.”  
  
Five scoffed. “Dad really is a dick, huh?”  
  
“Ain’t that the truth,” Klaus said through the all-encompassing ghostly fog. His words came out as though spoken underwater, muffled and muted. Only when he was able to clear his mind enough did he notice the irritated red welts circling both of Five’s bony wrists. Absently, Five was picking at the skin on his left wrist, eyes unfocused and downcast. “Wait, what happened here?” Klaus pointed toward them with a shaky finger.  
  
Five looked down at his chafed wrists for only a moment, then back up at Klaus. His initial plan had been to deflect (that was his reflexive, knee-jerk reaction to any sort of concern someone showed toward him). Deflect, deflect, deflect. He realized on second thought, however, that he would probably have to explain things to Klaus in case Father came back and found them. “Dad handcuffed me so I wouldn’t Jump. I got out of them, though. I guess, it wouldn’t have—”  
  
“Wait, wait, wait…” Klaus cut him off, holding out his hands in a ‘slow down’ motion. “He handcuffed you?!” He suddenly doesn’t feel as scared anymore, almost forgetting exactly where he is and who loomed in the corners.  
  
Five nodded curtly. “So I wouldn’t come here, I guess. It wasn’t that hard to connect the dots when he said you were off doing ‘individual training’. I mean, it’s pretty self-explanatory.”  
  
“Dead people and a place, right? By myself?” Klaus was pretty surprised that no one had made that connection before. Maybe they had, but weren’t able to sneak out of the house and come to his rescue. Five had a power that made ‘sneaking out’ look like child’s play. Klaus envied it.    
  
“The cemetery was the obvious answer. The mausoleum, though? Not so much.”  
  
Klaus nodded, understanding. “There are too many ghosts here, Five. More than in the house. They want my help, but I don’t know how to help them. The other ones just—“ His breath whistled. It felt as if someone’s hands were wrapped around his neck, squeezing and squeezing. He couldn’t breathe. “They just scream. Their voices don’t wear out so they can scream forever if they want to. Some of them do. The whole time.”  
  
Five pursed his lips, falling tiredly back against the wall beside Klaus. “The ones in the house, do you… do you know if they died there? Is it, like, haunted or something?” The thought was unsettling. Were there really ghosts following him around? Hiding in the corners, watching his every move? He knew that Klaus saw ghosts there, but he’d never really thought about it like that.  
  
“I don’t know if they died there. Some did, probably, but not all of them. I mean, Headless French Lady probably didn’t. Oh! And Disemboweled Nazi, Crucified Japanese Guy, the one chap that was skinned alive…” Klaus listed them off on his hands as if it wasn’t utterly insane. Five furrowed his brows, confused. “I don’t always see the same ghosts. Usually, once they leave, different ones show up to replace them.”  
  
“So it’s worse in here,” Five deduced.

Klaus nodded his head. “It’s different when it’s dark. At night, too, but yeah, never as bad as it is in here.”

Before Five knew it, he was speaking without even meaning to. It was in an attempt to make Klaus feel better, to lessen the burden of his undesirable powers. “You know, um… individual training sucks for everyone. It’s an unspoken sort of thing that we all have to deal with, I guess. Except for Vanya. She’s the lucky one.”  
  
“What’s it like for you then?” Five should've _known_ that he was going to ask that.

Klaus sounded so genuinely interested that Five couldn't help but answer. He didn't want to, but he did anyway. With a long-drawn sigh, he felt a bit of vulnerability peek through his usually-brisk demeanor. “Dad used to make me Jump through walls until I either threw up or passed out. When I figured out how to do that to his liking, he set up a room in the basement for my training. He filled up the floor with, like, six inches of water and I would have to stand in it. He’d shock the water with a wire if I stayed in one place for too long. Individual training sucks, Klaus, trust me."

"I'd always wondered what everyone else did. No one ever really talks about it."

Five shrugged. “No one talks about it because it’s too traumatizing. It baffles me that Luther can actually stand Father. His individual training probably isn't even that bad."

“He’s been brainwashed beyond any hope.” Klaus shook his head with an earnest sigh. “He’s too far gone.”  
  
“Ahhh…” Five nodded gravely, making a steeple with his hands like a concerned therapist. “Daddy’s-Boy disease. I’m afraid he won’t make it. There can only be one tyrannous, self-centered asshole in this family.”  
  
Klaus let out a chest-heavy laugh, “I thought the self-centered asshole in this family was _you_.”  
  
“Shut up!” Five shot back with not nearly as much venom as he had originally intended. “I could’ve just _left_ you here, all right? Then I wouldn’t have gotten handcuffed and slapped across the face.”  
  
“He _slapped_ you, too?!” Klaus floundered.

“Don’t act like that’s crazy or unheard of. You’ve never been slapped by Dad before?” Five wouldn’t believe it. He was almost 100% certain that Father had hit all of them at least once, that crazy bastard. Even Luther. It was better than being caned, he supposed. The thought sent a shiver down his spine. Father’s cane was the worst punishment of them all. He didn’t even want to _think_ about that brass-handled torture device.  
  
“No, no, no. I have. Many, many times, maybe even more than everyone else. It's just..." Klaus let out a weary sigh, then went on, “You shouldn’t have done that for me.”  
  
“I couldn’t have known I was gonna get slapped. Handcuffed, either. I did it for both of us. I wanted to this whole sneaking-out thing be a big ‘fuck you’ to Dad. I did it because I can and because I was… well…” Five shook his head. “I was concerned for you. We _all_ were." There it was again: Deflect, deflect, deflect.

"Well, thanks, I..." Klaus didn't know what to say (for the first time, like, ever). He had never seen Five like this. Ever. Five usually avoided any type of confrontation of this sort like the Black Death. He most defiantly had never actually admitted to having _feelings._ This was absolute madness! Klaus knew that Five cared about his siblings (hell, Five had come all the way out here, defied Father, and had actually gotten hurt from doing so and was completely fine with it), but he'd never actually admitted to being _concerned_ before.  
  
“Don’t get all sappy on me now. I was only trying to be nice.”  
  
“You? Nice?” Klaus scoffed, smiling nevertheless. “That’s rare!”  
  
Five socked him in the shoulder. “Shut up!” A beat passed before he realized what he had done and in the terms of which he had done it. He retracted, folded his arms, and said, “Touché, brother. Touché.”

**Author's Note:**

> danke for reading ilysm


End file.
